


Wabi Sabi

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, One-Shot, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 14:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8375011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Post S2, Ep2, a different ending to Supergirl and Cat's goodbye on the balcony.  In preparing to leave town, Cat reflects on her own imperfection and has a moment of imperfect perfection with Supergirl.





	

Cat Grant was a perfectionist.  She was never one for the Japanese notions of  _ wabi sabi _ , beauty in imperfection.  She wanted everything just so.  That was why she never laid hands on Kara Danvers, her plucky assistant, despite two years of dedicated service, of the girl’s persistent and personal caring, through thick and thin.  She couldn’t.  A perfect boss wouldn’t.

It was easier to put her arms around Supergirl, somehow.  Though Cat knew --had always known, really-- that Kara Danvers and Supergirl were one and the same, she felt Kara needed to be protected from the complicated torrents of feeling that sometimes dogged at Cat’s insides during her weaker moments.  She needed to be protected in a way that Supergirl didn’t.

Cat’s therapist often chuckled at this observation.  “Heroes have the softest hearts of all,” the old hippie chuckled, and Cat knew she was right.  But Supergirl’s arms were powerful, and Cat had seen up close many times over the strength that rippled through the young hero’s body.  Supergirl, she told herself, didn’t need to be protected from the likes of Cat Grant.

So here she stood on her terrace, for what was going to be the last time, and she squeezed Supergirl as hard as she could.  “Don’t disappoint me,” Kara whispered in her ear.  “I’m expecting great things from you, Miss Grant.”

Cat shivered and hugged harder.  “I was about to say the same.  I don’t want to bugger off for a while to come back and find your aunt resurrected from the dead and the entire city turned into zombies again.”

Kara smiled down at her.  Cat smiled back.  Bittersweet.  She knew (or she felt fairly sure) that mind-reading wasn’t among Kara’s talents.  Good thing, because she’d often thought about moments like this, leading to kisses, and… well.  Such thoughts wouldn’t do her any good.

“It won’t be the same around here without you,” Kara declared, and her warm smile sped Cat’s heart a little.  That true smile, it broke Cat’s heart a little, when the girl’s eyes crinkled at the corners and danced with warmth and she was truly at ease, those blue eyes with the one blown pupil Cat struggled not to stare at despite the way it caught her eye with its imperfection, its wabi sabi.

Cat knew she was exceptional, for a human.  But in the end, she was still human.  Flawed, petty, self-absorbed, impatient, mercurial, with a heart that had been dragged to kingdom come and back, stored in a very expensive, stylish box in her chest.  Too human, she thought briefly, to possibly warrant anything more than a slightly-too-long embrace from the powerful young Kryptonian.  Cat had no delusions about her own worth, but she could hardly compare, she knew, to the one and only Supergirl.  Cat Grant was a flawed rose; her stem still straight, her thorns still sharp, but her petals wilting each and every day, in ways that, at least for now, only she and a handful of others could see.

She felt the city’s pulse in the soles of her Louboutins, felt the sparkle of its lights on her skin and took a moment to breathe, and say goodbye to it all.  To go off and do what, she didn’t know.    


“Oh, don’t get all maudlin,” she snorted dismissively, more to herself than to Kara.

Kara smiled and released her from their hug.  “I’ll just miss you, that’s all.”

“You still have my number.”

Kara nodded once.  She hesitated for a minute and then took a breath.  “Cat, you know, I … you’ve never really asked, but, would you like me to take you flying for a bit?  I don’t know why we never really did that, but… the moon’s awfully pretty tonight and the city’s...well…”  She gestured at the landscape of diamonds stretching away toward the ocean.

“Well, you did throw me off this very balcony and then catch me,”  Cat said, a little more pointedly than she meant to.  “That’s about as close as I’d like to get.”

Kara’s face fell a bit.

Cat softened and touched Kara’s shoulder, consoling her.  “Don’t tell anyone, Supergirl, but I’m actually not a great fan of heights.”

Kara smiled again.  “Nobody’s perfect.”

_ You are, _ Cat thought.  “I’m definitely not.”

“Yeah,” Kara admitted, and her hand hesitated before drifting up to rest on Cat’s cheek.  “But I like you that way.”

She leaned down, pressed her lips softly to Cat’s.  Cat let herself go for a minute.  Let herself be imperfect.  Let Supergirl’s soft lips catch hers in the gentlest, most tentative moment Cat had ever experienced.  She didn’t press in, didn’t push for more, she just let it be.  Let herself be that ball of rage unraveling for half a moment, that rose refusing to wilt gently.  Let herself be imperfect and let the fact of the young woman's affection be enough for her.    


“Besides,” Kara whispered, touching her forehead to Cat’s.  “I’m not perfect.  I snore.”

Another quick, soft kiss.  A rustle of cape.  And she was gone.  Cat knew that it could never be more than that.  It wasn’t perfect.  But it was, at least for now, as she stood at the crossroads of never and always, it was enough.


End file.
